Medicine
by embracing
Summary: The second in the 'Grief' series. 'They say that grief hits you like the waves in a storm hit a boat.' But is it the big things, or the small things that hit you the hardest? Hermione's thoughts. [oneshot]


**A/N: **This isn't what I wanted it to be, but it was important for me to write. I've decided that I'm going to make a series of one-shots on how different characters take death. Mainly Harry's death because I believe that he has to die for it all to be over. This isn't the first one in the series, **Mortality **is. So this makes much more sense if you read it first. There will be more to come of these angsty rant, so be warned.

I'd like to dedicate this to Rose, because in so many ways she made me express my feelings.

------

It was horrific in so many ways to see the light disappear from his eyes. To see him become cold, and his body become limp. Horrific.

The world smelled different. Like medicine. Not the one that has no smell, but the one that is sickly sweet making you want to throw it back up, but instead you swallow it. Because really, that was what the world tried to be. Sweet. Everything went all right once they both had gone. But a person had died that wasn't meant to. Well that's how I think of it. But Ginny thought he'd always die. But she'd never admit that to Ron.

Death was like a wound. An open cut wound that takes longer than anything else to heal. It hurts more than anything you can think of. More than any physical pain imaginable. And you have to swallow that medicine to heal it. You have to allow the world to move on. But it's so hard, and you don't really want to. I have watched both Ginny and Ron do so, after years. I have been their rock, helped them get through the tough times.

But sometimes I fear that I let their pain take over me, and I wasn't allowed any time to mourn myself. Because the pain lies clear in me. With a cut sickly sweet that will never heal. Medicine I have poured over it seems to have only covered it.

Fred and George that mourning can be ended with laughter, because it is the most important thing in life. But I have laughed many many times since his death, but it seems to hurt more than do good.

Or maybe I'm just getting caught up with the grief. Maybe I'm letting it take me away. Maybe of all things I'm letting it stay. Because every day I wake up and look at his watch.

The watch he gave me on the day he died.

'You have to know the time when he comes,' he told me.

I wake up staring at my ceiling. I turn and see it on my table. The old swotch watch that he wore every day. The handy muggle watch that always had the right time. Broken and repaired along the wristband. He told us every year in Diagon Ally that he'd get a new one. But he grew too fond of the soft weathered material.

Every time someone comes in my room, they stop for a moment, and stare for a moment. I know that they are remembering him, just as I do every day when I wake up. It makes me feel less alone in the world, but it doesn't make the pain cease.

They say that grief hits you like the waves in a storm hit a boat. But really, I find that it's not the huge things that hit you. It's the small things. Because it's not the watch that makes me sniff, and hold back tears… but the thought that he will never wear it again.

It's not the style of watch that was so him that makes my heart lurch… but the crooked broken face that matched his lopsided grin.

It's not the worn down expression you see written all over the wristband that makes fiery tears prickle at my eyes… but the fine simple sewing done by his hand.

And it's not the fact that he won't ever tell the time again that brings the tears cascading down my face and inhuman sobs start to rack my chest… but the fact that he didn't know it when he came.

8:37p.m.

I kept the time for him.

It was so horrific to see the one and only Boy Who Lived expression fade away to nothingness and his body fall to the ground. Horrific. But maybe I'm really so stuck up on his death, because I was the only one who saw the light disappear from his eyes.

So maybe, in so little ways but in so many, the waves in the storm knock the breath out of you because the big things _do_ count. Because his death, the biggest thing of them all, has you thinking about the small things.


End file.
